As they advanced into the tunnel all senses alert they noticed a faint light far ahead. Cautiously they advanced towards it. Tachyon vision spotted electric eye beams regardless of how they were camouflaged so they were pretty confident their approach was unobserved. As they neared the other end they started to pick up faint traces of minds ahead. Unwary minds hazed by drugs and lazily enjoying post-coital bliss. They smiled at each but continued to approach just as cautiously until they could see the people they were sensing. It was carved from rock but was by no means spartan. Generators provided power for lights and other amenities.
On a large pile of pillows in the center a man lazed awake but with his eyes closed. A cylinder hung from the corner of his mouth connected via tubing to a hookah bubbling away in a corner. He had two naked women asleep on top of him and from his mind it was clear that he’d just had sex with both of them. Jason and Myra crept up on him and Myra reached out to touch his ankle. She was thinking that her touch would more likely to raise new alarms than Jason’s. He smiled when touched but did not stir. Once she had skin to skin contact she entered his mind. Jason linked with her and together they explored his memory. They got a huge shock. Aayla was the one who had singled him out and set him up here. It was Aayla who had been behind the attack on Myra! She had set up to kill each of her sisters. They searched the man’s mind furiously for the other plots. Aayla had used heat vision and flying speed to turn a small storm into a killer hurricane headed for Paris’ islands. She was planning to attack under cover of the storm and trust to the lack of witnesses and severity of the storm to make people believe her death an accident. They split up then. Jason continuing to search while Myra left the tunnel to reach Paris telepathically and warn her about the coming attack. It was easier to do without tons of rock overhead.
Jason stayed and searched the man’s mind further. No longer caring if he woke. They had found the leader of the ring already and there was no longer any need for stealth, and a great need for speed. He quickly picked out the plan for Klara. It involved more of those peculiar guns and more paint with lots of gold particles in suspension. The ladies woke up while he searched the man’s mind but they just backed away from the grim expression on his face. Afterwards he put them all to sleep with a “spell” and headed outside to see if Myra had contacted Paris yet. She was still new to this sort of thing after all.
As he was nearing the end of the tunnel there was a tremendous BOOM! A shockwave smashed him backwards and the tunnel collapsed on top of him. Anyone but a Supremis would be dead instantly from the shockwave alone and the collapse of the tunnel would have flattened a Betan eventually. The whole mountainside had slid down and no trace of the tunnel remained. Jason, enhanced to almost Primal levels lived but was unable to free himself. He reached out mentally to Myra and found her much worse off than himself. She was deeply unconscious, and badly hurt. She’d had only a split second’s warning. Aayla’s attack was fast, vicious, and calculated to kill even a Prime with the blood of the Ancient ones. Only her instinctive use of her new Diaboli powers had blunted enough of the force to leave her alive. Aayla had stayed to gloat and she would soon notice that Myra still lived. Jason had to think fast. He was unable to reach either of them and even if he did he was no match for Aayla physically. Mentally he was more than her match but it would take precious time to fight through the layers of shields he could feel she had woven around her thoughts.
Then he smiled. Pinned by tons of rock with a homicidal Vel/Krypt hybrid outside he suddenly grinned. Aayla had great power and little conscience but she was a self taught telepath. She was only shielding the front of her mind. The part of her that thought and schemed and rationalized was protected. There are older parts of the brain that influence us as much or more. All those who come from human stock share a legacy that goes back far beyond the dawn of reason. The Diaboli named this the lizard brain. It was the part that controlled reflex. In humans it controlled breathing and heartbeat as well as some learned reflexes such jerking away from surfaces hot enough to burn. Supremis never developed that one but they shared other reflexes with their more vulnerable kin. Jason’s mind dove at Aayla, a skillful thrust that avoided all the shields she thought impregnable. He passed around them without impediment. What he wanted was both deeper in and completely unprotected. His will, his oldest and greatest weapon, galvanized by the need to protect the woman he loved, headed for Aayla’s lizard brain where all her darkest fears and desires resided. He set free all her fears, opened all the stops, and invested her every nightmare and irrational dread with fervent life. She screamed horribly. The sound alone cracked rocks and caused landslides. If she’d been human she’d be dead of fright. But unfortunately for Aayla her body was too tough to die from an overload of fear. She fled as fast as she could, still screaming. Running mindlessly too scared to even be able to fly she ran through three and small boulders uncaring in her heedless flight. She quickly passed out of Jason’s range but it would be a long, long time before she calmed down and even longer until she’d be able to make herself go back to the spot where she’d almost killed her sister. Jason felt some satisfaction at this measure of revenge but mostly he still worried for Myra. She needed help if she was to survive. Jason reached out with his mind frantically trying to reach somebody. There had to be somebody in range!